The last governor went through such an exercise with little to show for it. I was appointed as a "taxpayer association representative" on his Task Force on Comprehensive Revenue Restructuring in 2007. In the end the major recommendation was, in effect, to grow state government revenue by diverting the kicker into a new rainy day fund. I opposed that recommendation for a number of reasons; not the least of which was that until there is some better, more comprehensive spending limitation in this state, the kicker remains the best way to hold government spending in check.

Before this governor embarks on a similar revenue restructuring journey, I suggest that he focus on reducing the role of government in our lives where he can, and prioritize core state functions. He, and all of us, should remember famed management consultant Peter Drucker's warning that "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

One only has to watch committee hearings and chamber floor debates to know that many legislators announce potential conflicts of interest all the time. Wingard did so repeatedly when it came to votes that might affect his PR clients. In Oregon, legislators can and should do that, but they are not allowed to abstain from voting unless they are absent from the session.

Dr. Crew may be walking into "a state that abhors change" but don't forget our state motto (if we haven't abandoned it yet), "Oregon loves dreamers." Unfortunately, dreaming won't be enough; neither will the "burst of optimism" the author senses.

He may have the best of intentions, but he's walking into an impossible job. Central planning is a proven failure around the world. Yet Oregon seems determined to keep trying it on a grander and grander scale. No other state has followed our previous education reform plans such as the Education Act for the 21st Century and the Quality Education Model. We haven't even followed those very long ourselves.

Now we're supposed to be optimistic about the Oregon Education Investment Board plan, which will move accountability even farther from parents and students? Let's just hope that it doesn't take too long to determine that it too is a failure. Then perhaps we can try a real reform - large scale school choice for every student.

Dr. Crew may have the best of intentions, but he's signed on for an impossible job. Integrating pre-K through graduate school will be a super-political exercise, and he has admitted that he didn't pay much attention to the politics in his previous education positions in other states.

Ideally, education shouldn't be political, but as long as taxes fund the system and government builds and operates the schools then politics will be a more important consideration than what's best for individual children.

Dr. Crew apparently is supportive of charter schools and introducing technology and online learning (positions the teachers union won't like at all) but he's against true school choice (a position the union will applaud). How this will all shake out is unknowable, but the end result is pretty clear. I predict this effort will be as successful as Dr. Kitzhaber's first big education reform effort when he was Senate President in 1990 - the education act for the 21st century with its CIM and CAM tests (long since abandoned). Who said "those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?

teamster85, as stated here already, such a rent increase is a big deal to many renters. But perhaps even worse, the city is counting on renters blaming their landlords for the increase.

If the city were honest here, it would propose a direct tax on rent rather than pretending that it wants to tax landlords. It's always easier to "tax business" rather than to be honest about which individuals the government wants to target.

Onyx, You've got this backward. There is no "government cookie jar." The private sector made the cookies and built the jar. It's the government this is sticking its hands into that jar and extracting cookies that it did not make. And, as others have pointed out here, it's likely the renters who will pay the price.

While it's nice that the state is protecting consumers from some of Groupon's practices, it would also be nice if someone protected consumers against the city of Portland when it recently forced two companies to refund money paid on their Groupon offers because the city says those companies were charging prices that are too LOW. Not too high, but too low. Yes, Groupon and these companies were trying to give consumers a good deal, and the city wouldn't hear of it. The details are here:

Tom, you ask how could having one law enforcement agency for the entire state possibly lead to greater administrative costs than we already have? As I noted in an earlier comment, in the real world you run up against forces that economists call dis-economies of scale. There are many reasons that costs actually rise rather than fall when you try to consolidate such agencies.

You're correct that those of us who want less government might be expected to support such consolidations; I would have until I studied the research. Below is a sample of studies and commissions looking at the consolidation issue. If you think I cherry picked them, do your own Google study, asking for proof that such consolidations have actually led to lower costs and more efficiency. I suspect you'll find the same general conclusion that I have.

Aside from disagreeing with the assumption that there simply isn't enough revenue to fund "high-quality government services", the author's consolidation idea is likely to backfire.

Consolidating monopolies, which are basically what local government law enforcement agencies are, will lead to what economists describe as diseconomies of scale. Administrative costs will likely rise, not fall, as the leadership of each agency seeks to protect its turf.

A great example of this phenomenon is what happened when Oregon attempted to reduce administrative costs in education by consolidating 277 school districts down to 198 districts between 1992 and 2001. At the end of the period there were actually more central office staff per pupil than at the beginning. Also, non-teaching staff grew faster than teachers, and real per student spending rose more than 11 percent.* Don't be surprised if the same thing happened by consolidating local law enforcement agencies.

Portland garbage rates have skyrocketed since the early 1990s, not because the true cost of service has risen dramatically, but because the city took away the freedom to choose your own garbage hauler. Franchising garbage routes destroyed competition and guaranteed profits to politically connected companies.

Think what would happen to your grocery bill if the city forced you to only shop at one supermarket near your home - in the name of reducing driving and fuel costs, of course. Would the quality of food items go up or down? Would customer service be better or worse?

Garbage collection is not an inherently government function. It was done perfectly well in Portland for decades without government franchise protection. It's time to end that industry protection and return choice of garbage companies to Portland residents.

LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg took up Dionne's challenge in his own op-ed yesterday. He concludes that, not withstanding Dionne's pejorative label of the "anti-social" market, it is the very dynamic system of capitalism practiced in America that holds the best hope for net job creation and the best overall social good. Read it at:

It is refreshing to see people knowledgeable about urban renewal blow the whistle on this particular project. Of course the PSU urban renewal area is not "blighted" as required by law for such a project to go forward.

Hopefully Portlanders, and all Oregonians, will take a harder look at this and other urban renewal projects that all too often simply enrich political cronies at the expense of everyone else.

To back up your statement that Oregon school districts spend much more than the $6,109 per student mentioned in this column, a quick look at data compiled by the nation's largest teachers union puts Oregon at $11,391 cost per enrolled student in the 2009-10 school year.* We can quibble about exact numbers, and whether they're slightly up or down over the last few years, but readers shouldn't be left with the impression that state funding is all there is.

troutsandy, why do you think the Quality Education Model will do anything but extract an extra $2 billion from Oregon taxpayers every biennium? The QEM is a theoretical model of prototype schools that dictates virtually every aspect of classroom and school building activity. Has it been replicated anywhere outside Oregon? Has it ever actually been used anywhere, and if so what were the results?

sherzor, this is not necessarily true. Yes, in Oregon the union does negotiate for all teachers including those who pay fair share dues but don't join the union. But, in a Right To Work state federal labor law allows the union to only negotiate for those who voluntarily join the union.

azure, your bad online learning experience may be the exception to the fast-becoming-rule of tremendously beneficial online education. The free Khan Academy for K-12 as mentioned above, the new Harvard-MIT college-level effort that Brooks discusses, and other online sources are clearly part of our educational future.

Open-minded teachers like Mr. Scott are to be applauded. Closed-minded teachers unions, like the Status Quo Lobby (statusquolobby.com) Oregon Education Association, are the problem. They see education as a jobs program, primarily benefiting the adults getting paid in the classroom instead of the students trying to learn.

Nougat, it's not just mag-lev that doesn't pencil out here. No fixed rail options make economic sense anywhere in the Portland region; we simply don't have anywhere close to the population density needed for them to be rationally considered.

You wish that public officials would do the "heavy lifting of educating the public of the value of proposed costly mass transit projects" but it can't be done because the value simply isn't there. That may be why they concentrate on shutting out public voices that raise this inconvenient truth.

There are, of course, real benefits to such projects, but they go almost exclusively to those in the planning, construction and development firms that promote and build them. The rest of us pay the bills and suffer with worsening, less flexible transit options.

mass transit. bus, light rail, heavy rail, streetcar, Amtrak, mag-lev if some genius can get it to work reliably and cost effectively.

I believe even the founders who took issue with Jefferson's pure vision of self-government would be aghast at how far we have strayed from that vision.

FDR's "alternative narrative" has moved us far from that vision. But President Obama's narrative seems to be wearing thin. If it's true that history moves in cycles, it is past time for this cycle to begin moving us back toward Jefferson's vision.